His comments - and those of Ron Paul and the other 63 folks who voted against perpetuating this war - will be part of the honor roll of our time.

On the Republican side, Rep. Paul was joined in opposing the Afghan war by Rep. Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, and Rep. John Campbell of California.

As for the 356 members of Congress who voted for the war - I hope this vote sticks to them like a tar baby the rest of their lives.

It lasted about 60 minutes. 75 minutes, max.

The photo is from late 1988 or early 1989. The State Department had a program that brought in some outside speaker once a month. I was there to whup up on the World Bank, a favorite target of mine in those years.

The photo looks like I am waiting with a lawyer before going to make a plea bargain before a judge. The lawyer is practically rolling his eyes, wondering if the judge will swallow the line of bull I was preparing to proffer.

A right-wing New Jersey blogger charged with threatening federal judges told a
jury Thursday that his racist Internet rants were an FBI-sanctioned ruse to “flush out” dangerous neo-Nazi and white supremacist members of his audience.
“I’m not a white supremacist,” Hal Turner testified at a retrial in Brooklyn. “Never have been.”
Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., has used his testimony to detail his career as a paid informant for an FBI agent investigating extremists. Prosecutors haven’t disputed he was an informant, but say he acted on his own last year when he wrote that three federal judges in Chicago “deserve to be killed” for a decision on gun control and posted their photos and the courthouse.
Asked on cross-examination Thursday about another blog posting that lauded the 2005 slaying of the mother and husband of another federal judge in Chicago, Turner insisted that the FBI had encouraged him to do it to help identify the killer.
The missive was meant to “improve my anti-government image with the people we were trying to flush out,” he said.

I have not followed this trial, but it would be great if Turner’s lawyers could compel the FBI to open their files and reveal the feds’ ties with this guy.

This is reminiscent of the 1960s, when undercover federal agents dressed as protestors would destroy property or commit violent acts during antiwar demonstrations.

It’s amazing to see what kind of legal crap the government gets away with these days.

The Material Witness Charade Freedom Daily, December 2009
by James Bovard
Last September, a federal appeals court ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft could be personally sued for the unjustified incarceration of innocent people as “material witnesses” in the wake of 9/11.

The case involved a former college football star — Lavoni T. Kidd — who converted to Islam, changed his name to Abdullah al-Kidd, and was seized at Dulles Airport as he was preparing to travel to Saudi Arabia to pursue Islamic studies. Even though the feds had no evidence that al-Kidd — an American citizen — had done anything wrong, they locked him away for weeks as a “material witness.” The Washington Post noted,

He was detained for some two weeks, during which he was transferred to facilities in three states, subjected to multiple strip searches and held in cells that were lighted 24 hours a day. After his release, Mr. Kidd was required for more than a year to live with his wife and in-laws in Nevada while his travel was restricted to three adjacent states, and he had to report his whereabouts to a probation officer and consent to in-home visits.

The feds never charged al-Kidd or brought him forward as a witness for any trial. He sued in 2005, asserting that the detention violated his constitutional rights and that it had cost him both his marriage and his job.

The appeals court slammed the government hard:

The Fourth Amendment was written and ratified, in part, to deny the government of our then-new nation such an engine of potential tyranny. And yet, if the facts alleged in al-Kidd’s complaint are actually true, the government has recently exercised such a “dangerous engine of arbitrary government” against a significant number of its citizens, and given good reason for disfavored minorities (whoever they may be from time to time) to fear the application of such arbitrary power to them….

We find this to be repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.

Not surprisingly, the Washington establishment is vigorously opposed to permitting courts to hold high-ranking government officials liable for trampling Americans’ constitutional rights. A Washington Post editorial fretted, “Officials should not have to fear personal lawsuits for performing their duties in good faith and in violation of no established legal precedent.”

In reality, the Bush-Ashcroft policy on material witnesses was brazenly unconstitutional from the start, as anyone who was not hopelessly kowtowing would have recognized.

After 9/11 the Justice Department locked up many people as material witnesses for potential testimony at some future date before a grand jury. On April 30, 2002, federal judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that policy to be unconstitutional: “Since 1789, no Congress has granted the government the authority to imprison an innocent person in order to guarantee that he will testify before a grand jury conducting a criminal investigation.” Scheindlin warned that the Bush administration’s interpretation of federal law could make “detention the norm and liberty the exception.”

The Bush administration appealed the case and ignored the ruling. Federal Judge Michael Mukasey, whom Bush would later select as his final Attorney General, upheld the Bush administration’s policy.

Secrecy

Scheindlin’s decision, unlike most of the Bush Justice Department’s post–9/11 actions, was not reached behind closed doors and then hidden from the world. But the Bush team strutted forward, ignoring any judge who did not kowtow to its power grabs.

The Justice Department refused to disclose the number of people jailed under the federal witness statute. The Washington Post reported in November 2002 that “nearly half ” of the 44 people the Post confirmed jailed under this provision “have never been called to testify before a grand jury” and that “at least seven of the witnesses were U.S. citizens.”

Nationally acclaimed Miami defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Neal Sonnett noted that the fact that some material witnesses never testified “would tend to indicate that the use of the material witness statute was more of a ruse than an honest desire to record the testimony of that person.” The Post noted, “The material witness cases have been adjudicated in unusual secrecy. Most, if not all, are subject to judicial sealing orders, and there is confusion among defense attorneys across the nation about what information they can make public.” A Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review analysis concluded, “The government uses these [material witness] laws to round up people because of what it expects them to do, rather than what it can prove they have done.”

Steven Brill, author of After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era, noted that the material-witness hook was used in cases in which “not even minor crimes could be established, or where the government was worried that these people were so important that they did not want them to get lawyers quickly (as they would be entitled to if charged with any crime)…. Ashcroft’s team … would control when, if ever, that person might be asked to testify — meaning they would seek to hold the person indefinitely so as to coerce him to talk.” He also notes that detaining people as material witnesses meant that they “could be questioned without lawyers present because they were not being charged with any crime.”

High-profile cases

Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel was locked up for five months as a material witness largely because he might have served food to two of the 9/11 hijackers at the Delray Beach, Florida, restaurant where he worked. An FBI agent also asserted that a movie-theater ticket agent claimed to have seen Bellahouel go to the movies in the company of the hijackers. But as the Miami Daily Business Review noted, “The FBI didn’t identify the theater employee. Nor did government lawyers produce her for cross-examination at the bond hearing” where Bellahouel was finally set free. Bellahouel denied ever having gone to the movie theater. During his detention Justice Department prosecutors sought “to strip Bellahouel of the court-appointed lawyer to which he became entitled when the material witness warrant was issued at the end of December 2001,” according to immigration attorney David Silk, who explained that the feds “quashed the [material witness] warrant to keep him from being represented when the FBI talked to him.” Bellahouel, who was a veterinarian in Algeria before coming to America, was released on a $10,000 bond on March 1, 2002.

Even though Bellahouel is married to an American citizen, the Justice Department sought to deport him because he entered the United States on a student visa in 1996 and completed only one year at Florida Atlantic University. His case became public knowledge only because of an error by a clerk at the federal appeals court in Atlanta.

One of the best-known material-witness cases involved Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, whom the FBI arrested in 2004 for his alleged involvement in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 and left 2,000 wounded. A U.S. counterterrorism official told Newsweek that Mayfield’s fingerprint was an “absolutely incontrovertible match” to a copy of the fingerprint found on a bag of bomb detonators near the scene of the Madrid attack. News of Mayfield’s arrest provided alarming evidence that Americans were involved in international conspiracies to slaughter civilians around the globe, and he was informed that he could face the death penalty for his crimes.

Employing USA PATRIOT Act powers, the feds, prior to the arrest, conducted secret searches of Mayfield’s home and tapped his phone and email. After the arrest, they froze his bank accounts. The FBI’s arrest affidavit revealed that its agents had “observed Mayfield drive to the Bilal Mosque located at 415 160th Ave., Beaverton, Oregon, on several different occasions.” Another incriminating detail in the arrest warrant: he had advertised his legal service in the Muslim Yellow Pages. (Mayfield, a former Army lieutenant, converted to Islam and has an Egyptian wife.) In early April, the Spanish police described Mayfield “as a U.S. military veteran who was already under investigation by U.S. authorities for alleged ties to Islamic terrorism,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Yet the key to the case — the fingerprint — was as bogus as a politician’s campaign promise. The FBI quickly claimed to have achieved a match on the partial print, but, on April 13, Spanish government officials warned the FBI that their experts were “conclusively negative” that Mayfield’s print matched the print on the bomb detonator bag.

Mayfield was arrested as a “material witness,” thereby permitting the feds to hold him as long as they pleased without charging him with a specific crime. After he was arrested, FBI agents raided his home and office and carted off boxes of his papers and his family’s belongings. Among the items seized were “miscellaneous Spanish documents,” according to an FBI statement to the federal court. These supposedly incriminating papers turned out to be the Spanish homework of Mayfield’s son. Perhaps elite FBI investigators suspected that “Hola, Paco. Como estas?” was a secret code.

Though the FBI never possessed anything on Mayfield aside from a misidentified fingerprint, it did not hesitate to paint him in sinister colors. The FBI informed a federal judge, “It is believed that Mayfield may have traveled under a false or fictitious name.” But Mayfield, whose passport expired the previous year, insisted he had not left the country. The FBI apparently never bothered to check whether he had been absent from the United States before making one of the most high-profile terrorism arrests of the year.

The FBI’s evidence was a heap of unsubstantiated hokum and ludicrous inferences. But the Justice Department refused to release Mayfield until after the Spanish government announced that they had found a clean match to the fingerprints on the bomb-detonator bag.

America is still in the dark regarding many of the legal atrocities that occurred since 2001. It will be a bright day for American liberty if John Ashcroft is placed on the witness stand and forced to testify under oath, hour after hour, day after day, about the crimes that he and others committed against the Constitution.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Karl Rove has a new book out claiming that Bush never lied about the Iraq war. Instead, there were some misstatesments with immaculate intent.

This is utter crap.

Bush told so many lies about Iraq that people forgot all except a few brazen highlights. Here’s a piece I did for USA Today in 2003 on why Bush’s entire case for the war was a damn lie.
****
USA TODAY August 14, 2003
By accident or design, Bush hyped case for war
By James Bovard

President Bush, in his July 30 press conference, declared: “I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course. Absolutely.” Bush made this declaration in response to a question about wrong information regarding Iraq’s attempt to purchase uranium in Niger. He hoped it would end a controversy that is eating away like an acid drip on his administration’s credibility. But the “16 words” — as Bush defenders characterize his reference to the attempted uranium purchases in his State of the Union address — were not the most brazen example of trampling the truth on the road to war.

From January onward, Bush constantly portrayed the United States as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression. His repeated claims that war was being “forced upon us” was the biggest, most consistent scam Bush used to convince the American people that their government had no alternative but to invade another nation. Examples:

•Jan. 28, in his State of the Union address: “If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means, sparing, in every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military, and we will prevail.”

•Feb. 10, in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in Nashville: “If war is forced upon us — and I say ‘forced upon us’ because use of the military is not my first choice — I hug the mothers and the widows of those who may have lost their life in the name of peace and freedom.”

•Feb. 20, at a Kennesaw, Ga., school: “If war is forced upon us, we will liberate the people of Iraq from a cruel and violent dictator.”

•Feb. 26, at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington: “If war is forced upon us by Iraq’s refusal to disarm, we will meet an enemy who … is capable of any crime.”

The longer Bush continues warring, the more vital it is for Americans to learn the lessons of the Iraq war. Simply because Saddam was evil did not purify this war against Iraq. Certainly, a military victory does not automatically absolve the Bush administration of the falsehoods it told prior to launching an unprovoked and unnecessary war. If victory is justice’s only measure, then the U.S. government could lie about almost any other government and — after the U.S. military assaulted the country into submission — it would be another triumph for “the American way.”

Shortly after his inauguration, Bush joked to a crowd of Washington insiders: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you need to concentrate on.” It would be naive to assume that all of Bush’s false statements are accidents or oversights. White House senior policy adviser Karl Rove explained to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward how the war on terrorism would be judged by the American public: “Everything will be measured by results. The victor is always right. History ascribes to the victor qualities that may or may not actually have been there. And similarly to the defeated.”

Lies regarding the use of government power are almost never harmless errors. The more lies officials are allowed to tell, the less chance citizens have of controlling the government. And the more power a politician seeks, the more dangerous his lies become.

The fact that Bush went to war against Iraq based on false charges and a deceptive strategy is the key to knowing what to expect from the remainder of the Bush presidency. There is no reason to presume that Bush was more deceptive and manipulative on the war on Iraq than he is on the war on terrorism or other subjects. Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.

James Bovard is the author of the forthcoming Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil.

Good to see the left-wing websites hammering Obama, Leahy, and Rep. Nadler for sanctifying and perpetuating some of the worst abuses of the post 9/11 era.

Alternet’s whack is here.

Fire Dog Lake’s whack is here.

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Szasz has written a preface for the 50th anniversary edition. You can read it here on LewRockwell.com today. This essay deftly captures the controversies and changing battlefield over the past half century.

Szasz’s conclusion perfectly captures the transcendent issue:

Formerly, when Church and State were allied, people accepted theological justifications for state-sanctioned coercion. Today, when Medicine and the State are allied, people accept therapeutic justifications for state-sanctioned coercion. This is how, some two hundred years ago, psychiatry became an arm of the coercive apparatus of the state. And this is why today all of medicine threatens to become transformed from personal therapy into political tyranny.

I hope that many other publications and organizations turn their attention to Szasz’s work during the golden anniversary of his classic.

John Bolton Harvests Young Souls:

Ann Coulter Bodyguard (Tonya Harding wasn’t hiring this month)

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Full size photo available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bovard
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